AUTHOR=Wong Kristyn , Hicks Laurel M. , Seuntjens Terri G. , Trentacosta Christopher J. , Hendriksen Tessel H. G. , Zeelenberg Marcel , van den Heuvel Marion I. 

TITLE=The Role of Mindful Parenting in Individual and Social Decision-Making in Children

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology

VOLUME=10

YEAR=2019

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00550

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00550

ISSN=1664-1078

ABSTRACT=<p>Children are confronted with an increasing amount of choices every day, which can be stressful. Decision-making skills may be one of the most important “21st century skills” that children need to master to ensure success. Many aspects of decision-making, such as emotion regulation during stressful situations, develop in the context of caregiver-child interactions. This study examined whether mindful parenting predicts children’s individual and social decision-making. The current study included 63 mother-child dyads from The Netherlands (Child <italic>M<sub>age</sub></italic> = 5.11, <italic>SD</italic> = 0.88, 50.8% girls). Mothers completed the Dutch version of the Interpersonal Mindfulness in Parenting Scale (IM-P). A “Choice Task” was developed to measure individual decision-making skills, and a “Sharing Task” was created to measure social decision-making in young children. Higher maternal mindful parenting significantly predicted more sharing after controlling for covariates (child age, sex, SES, maternal education level; <italic>Wald</italic> = 4.505, <italic>p</italic> = 0.034). No main effect of maternal mindful parenting was found for any of the individual decision-making measures. These findings suggest that mindful parenting supports children’s social decision-making. Future research should investigate if the combination of mindful parenting and children’s early decision-making skills predict key developmental outcomes.</p>